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The counting for six Assembly seats across five states that went to polls on Saturday threw up results expected in by-elections. The ruling parties in these states won all the seats.
The most notable of the victories was that of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa from the RK Nagar seat in Chennai, while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dislodged Congress from second spot in the two seats that the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) won in Tripura. But the BJP failed to consolidate upon gains it had made in Thiruvananthapuram in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
In other results, Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP triumphed in the Garoth seat in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh. With barely a year left to the state polls, the ruling Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) got a shot in the arm by winning from Aruvikkara constituency in Thiruvananthapuram. The Congress, which leads a government in Meghalaya, won the Chokpot seat.
Jayalalithaa, who is also the chief of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), won the RK Nagar seat by a record margin of over 150,000 votes. She defeated Communist Party of India (CPI)’s C Mahendran. All other mainstream parties had boycotted the election that was necessitated after a sitting AIADMK MLA vacated the seat to enable Jayalalithaa get elected to the assembly within six months of being sworn in as the Tamil Nadu CM.
Jayalalithaa was disqualified and quit as the CM after a Bengaluru court had convicted her in a disproportionate assets case in September. The Karnataka High Court acquitted her in May that allowed her to return to the chief ministerial chair. The Opposition Dravida Munnetra Kazghagam (DMK) termed the election a “farce”.
In Kerala, K S Sabarinadhan of the Congress defeated the CPI(M) candidate from Aruvikkara seat. BJP candidate and former union minister O Rajagopal came third in the fierce triangular contest. The result was disappointing for the BJP as Rajagopal had lost against Congress’ Shashi Tharoor by a thin margin of 15,000 votes from the Thiruvananthapuram seat in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
